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SOUTH CAROLINA, DISUNION, 


AND A 


MISSISSIPPI VALLEY CONFEDERACY. 





NO. L.—THE ANTECEDENTS OF SOUTH CAROLINA. 


The State, judged by its ruling majorities, has not had a single patriotic 
sensation for the last thirty years. As Gen. Jackson said, in his letter to the 
Rev. Mr. Crawford, she first sought disunion under the pretext of the tariff; 
and as he predicted, on the failure of that scheme, she has been ever since 
dilligently seeking it under pretext of the slave question. 

When she commenced this enterprise, thirty years ago, her aspect, as compa- 
red with that of many other States, was one of penury and decay. She seemed 
to be Jaboring under a lethargic paralysis.; With no manufacturing or mechan- 
ical industry, and but little external trade beyond the mere sale of her exports, 
she had no means of resuscitation by natural means. With nothing to invite 
influx of population or capital, both population and trade seemed to have come 
to a stand-still with an ominous prospect of material diminution of both, whilst 
most of the other States were progressingswith unprecedented rapidity. In this 
state of things it was easy for her politicians to delude her into the belief that 
her unprosperous condition could be remedied by the organization of a Southern 
Confederacy, of which she would be.the commercial.and political center. Hence 
the great unanimity with Which she attempted jher*mad experiments at nulli- 
fication and secession. The deep mortification for the disgraceful defeat of 
that experiment extinguished every remaining spark of her patriotism. It has 
never been forgotten or forgiven, but has been brooded over until rancorous 
hate toward the Union and the nation has been substituted for whatever of 
patriotism she once felt. Her guiding statesmen have held disunion as their 
ultimate aim in all political operations. It has been untiringly pursued with 
demoniac hate and perseverance, and with a statesman-like ability worthy of 
a better cause. Their policy hasj been, in aid of re disunionists, to 
agitate unceasingly the slave question, for the ‘purpose of consolidating the 
South into a sectional party, well knowing the necessary consequence to be 


the consolidation and sectionalizing of the North, together with ultimate dis- 


union. Abolition disunionists and fire-eating disunionists have, for more than 
twenty years, been aids to each other in the accomplishment of their mutual 
designs against the Union. 

So early as 1835 they commenced the formal agitation in Congress, under 
the miserable pretext of the presentation of abolition petitions, and it has 
been perseverinzly kept up ever since. The bulk of the nation, North and 
South, all the time, honestly endeavoring to keep down the agitation. The 
South was indulged, at the expense of an onerous foreign war, in the acqui- 
sition of Texas, for the purpose of extending the area of slavery over five new 
States. But this was not done fast enough for South Carolina and her co- 
conspirators. A convention of Southern States was called to meet at Nash- 
ville, under the cry of ‘‘Texas or Disunion,” but it was indignantly repulsed 
by the citizens of Nashville and failed. But five years later a Southern con- 
vention was actually held in Nashville with the view of promoting digunion. 
The convention was largely attended by prominent men from Carolina, Geor- 
gia, Alabama and Mississippi, but there were only a very few from Tennes- 


see, and not a man from Kentucky. This Convention! recommended a Con- 


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gress of Southern States to redress Southern grievances, the chief of those 
supposed grievances being, at that time, the refusal of Congress to legislate 
slavery into the southern half of California against the wishes of its citizens. 
The legislatures of South Carolina and Mississippi were all that acceded to 
this recommendation of a Southern Congress. During the discussion in the 
South Carolina legislature leading members undisguisedly avowed disunion 
as their object, and even said that so far from having any love for the Union, 
it was the object of their detestation and abhorrence. Mississippi was guilty 
of the folly of actually calling a convention to decide upon secession on ac- 
eount of their grievances. ‘The agitators were sorely disappointed, and 
severely rebuked. ‘The convention decided that there was no need for its 
call, and expressly repudiated secession as nothing but revolution and rebel- 
lion. | 

In 1850 the South was indulged with the passage of a more efficient fugi- 
tive slave law, and all sectional questions were settled by what, it was hoped, 
would prove a permanent compromise pacification. The Democratic. party 
justly claimed the ehief credit in obtaining this compromise, and the nation 
was 80 well satisfied therewith that its candidate for the Presidency.in 1852 
secured the vote of twenty-seven out of thirty-one States. But pacification did 
not suit the disunion agitators. Under their influence the Missouri Compro- 
mise was repealed, with full fore-knowledge that its repeal would cause a 
more intense excitement on the slavery question than was ever before witness- 
ed; that it would probably destroy the northern wing of the Democratic 
party; and that it would do the South no good, as it was utterly impractica- 
ble to make a Slave State out of Kansas. After the repeal had given the con- 
trol of the House of Representatives to the Free-Soilers, and Mr. Buchanan 
had escaped defeat by frauds and accident, instead of doing anything to soothe 
the excitement. they purposely intensified it by attempting to force through 
the infamous Lecompton swindle against the known wishes-of four-fifths of 
the voters of Kansas. JT ailing in that, they actually accomplished the passage 
of the equally infamous bribery bill, whereby they insolently proclaimed that 
Kansas had population enough to be admitted asa Slave State, but not half 
enough to be admitted asa Free State. This discrimination in favor of the 
slavery propaganda they well knew was a grosser sectional outrage and insult 
than any, or all the acts of the North combined. The fraud saturation of the 
Lecompton swindle was so notorious, that a distinguished South Carolina 
Senator was compelled to admit, in afterward addressing his constituents, 
“that Southern honor required that the South itself should have kicked the 
infamy out of Congress.” Having thus deprived the Democracy of all foot- 
hold in the North, they split it into two fragments, nominate a Southern can- 
didate for the Presidency and proclaim that if he is defeated, or which, under 
the circumstances, was the same, that if Lincoln was elected the Union should 
be dissolved. His election should be cause .for disunion, when they them- 
selves did the very thing to insure his election, even if the bare utterance of 
such a threat was not itself sufficient for that purpose. What the North, in 
cooler moments, may do for the purpose of conciliation we have yet to see, 
but that it should have ignominiously succumbed under the threat, no intelli- 
gent honorable man could have expected; eighteen millions of Americans can- 
not be bullied. The threat was no doubt worth hundreds of thousands of 
votes to Lincoln, and that result was what was aimed at in its utterance. No 
intelligent man can doubt that his election was precisely what the disuniqn 
agitators aimed to accomplish, and most ardently desired. The grounds of 
their split with the Northern Democracy, and abandonment of the Cincin- 
nati platform, upon a practically unessential abstraction, cannot be elevated. 
to the dignity of even a respectable pretext. Disunion was the motive, the. 
real motive. This, their conduct since the election places beyond all cavil or. 
doubt. 

Since 1835 South Carolina has been industriously pursuing the policy more ° 
recently enunciated by her talented and influential leader, Mr. Rhett, in the. 
following words: ‘‘ All true statesmanship in the South consists in forming 
combinations and shaping events, so as to bring about as speedily as possible 


3008! 


3 
j 
a dissolution of the present Union, and a Southern Confederacy.’ Or as' 
still more distinctly portrayed in the language of the distinguished agitator, 
Mr. Yancey: ‘Organize committees all over the Cotton States to fire the 
Southern heart, instruct the Southern mind, give courage to each other, and 
at the proper moment, by one organized, concerted action precipitate the 
Cotton States into revolution.” In pursuance of this policy South Carolina, 
through her leaders, became a full participant in the atrocious secret con- 
spiracy of eminent politicians and hich officials in most of the Southern States 
to precipitate the nation into civil war in the event of Fremont’s election to 
the Presidency. The avowed scheme was, without waiting any sanction of 
the people of the South or any part of them, to precipitate the civil war by a 
seizure of the government with armed force. This civil war with the North, 
Gov. Wise confessed, would be accompanied by a “‘neighborhdod civil war” 
with the Union-loving men of the South. To meet the exigencies of the occa- 
sion he said they would arm their slaves. Whilst Senator Clingman said the 
Union men would be hushed by the ‘swift attention of vigilance commit- 
tees.’ A national civil war and a neighborhood civil war combined, to be 
carried on with the aid of armed slaves and committees of assassins, was the 
merciful boon prepared for the nation by these cold-bl6oded, remorseless con- 
spirators, and from which we were saved only by the accidental running of a 
third candidate. The worst wickedness imputed, as the supposed design of 
the worst abolitionists, does not transcend this in infamous atorcity. It is 
rivaled in cruel wickedness by nothing done or attempted by conspirators 
‘since the days of Cataline. Had we not their own avowals for the facts, it 
would be incredible that sane men, educated men, could have seriously con- 
-spired, in a Christian, eivilized country, for the perpetration of such an 
enormous crime. How intense and unappeasable must be their hate of the 
Union and the nation! That precipitation without consultation with the 
people is still the desire of leading disumionists, may be inferred from the 
indiscreet admission recently made before the members of the Georgia legis- 
Jature by Senator Toombs, that he had no confidence in the people, and 
feared to trust them with a decision of the question of secession. 
With this understanding of the long settled views and feelings of South 
‘ Carolina, we shall be the better able to appreciate her candor in her state- 
ment of alleged crievances by way of justification for her attempted secession. 
In the next number her Declaration of Independence will be considered. 


NO. II.—SOUTH CAROLINA’S DECLARATION OF INDE- 
PENDENCE. 


The most notable thing about this attempt of South Carolina to break up 
‘the Iederal Government and dissolve the Union, is that she has not a single 
- complaint, fictitious or real, not one to allege against the structure of the Goy- - 

ernment, or the manner of its administration. She alleges neither want of 
power or inclination on the part of the Government to protect and promote her 
“mghts and interests, So far as the Government is concerned, the complaint 
i718 against not what has been done, but what she fears may hereafter be done, 
' by the prohibition of slavery in the Territories, if the Republicans should 
hereafter obtain the control of the two houses of Congress. ‘To say nothing of 
the great improbability of that contingency occurring, if it were actually to 
oécur, such a prohibition would furnish only the flimsiest pretext for so mighty 
a revolution. Such a prohibition, if it had not to encounter the decision of 
the Supreme Court, denouncing it as void and unconstitutional, would if le- 
gally valid accomplish nothing which the laws of climate and trade have not 
already irrevocably accomplished, there being no Territory into which slavery 
could be introduced, by any encouragement, for at least fifty years. Such a 
prohibition would be no novelty in our Government. It was established cotem- 
poraneously with the Government as tc all the country north of the Ohio; it 
was the basis of the Missouri Compromise, made, principally, by Southern 
votes; it was part of the Texas bill of 1845, passed with the aid of a large 
majority of Southern yotes, and which applied it to the whole or nearly the 


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whole of the Territory apollwhich it could now have any practical bearing ; 
and it was applied to the Oregon bill, which received the approval of the 
Southern President, Polk. Such examples would relieve the prohibition, if 
actually made, from the imputation of an unmistakable disposition in the 
North wantonly to oppress the South. The sum of this complaint is, the al- 
leged fear of an improbable occurrence, which, if it were actually to happen, 
would work no substantial prejudice to South Carolina, or any other Southern 
State. 

The other alleged grievances are, first, the non-rendition of fugitive slaves ; 
and second, the election of Lincoln. 

The grievance from the loss of fugitives is very small, if any, to South Car- 
Olina, She probably has not lost ten in as many years, by their escape into 
a Free State. There is no known instance of any citizen of hers ever having 
been obstructed in the reclaimation of a fugitive. In the total absence of any 
plausible grievance of her own, or of any other Cotton State, she has been 
compelled to try to avail herself of a grievance confined almost exclusively to 
the border States. We of those border States have not the sensibility to feel 
an insult when it is offered, nor the sense to appreciate an injury from which 
we are daily suffering. She, therefore, kindly steps in to vindicate our honor, 
andresent our injuries. So intense is her disinterested chivalry that she will 
resent the insult, and right the wrong, even at the expense of all her patriotic 
feelings, and all her duty of allegiance to a Government under which she 
has lived in peaceful prosperity for eighty years. Such is her self-sufficiency 
in judging our suffered insults and injuries, that she deems it wholly superflu- 
ous to consult us as to the mode or measure of the redress, Had she conde- 
scended to do this, she would have been told that her remedy was worse than 
the disease; that instead of promising alleviation, it would certainly cause a 
tenfold aggravation of the complaint; that for every fugitive we now lose we 
should certainly lose at least ten after disunion on the slave line. Nor is this 
all. She would have been further told that the effect of placing another 
Canada upon our immediate border in facilitating the escape of irreclaimable 
fugitives, would be to create a restless anxiety and continued efforts at escape, 
such as to render our slaves nearly worthless, and compel their exportation. 
Thus to remedy the loss of a few, we should suffer the certain loss or depri- 
vation of the whole. 

Nor is this unknown to her; she cannot affect to be so ignorant. Hence she 
allows no consultation about the redress of our peculiar wrongs and insults. 

Her late Governor, Gist, had the impudent frankness, in his recent message 
to her Legislature, to divulge her very disinterested policy upon this subject. 
Having made up her mind to disunion for the sake of re-opening the African 
Slave Trade, or for the sake of some other supposed local advantage of her 
own, or for the sake of vengeance in her gratification of her hate to the Union 
and the nation, her policy was to precipitate as many of the other Cotton 
States as she could into disunion also. She was to trust to the assurances of 
‘her co-conspirators for the immediate co-operation of: some four of them, and 
to the example of the five for drawing the other Cotton States after them. 
The co-operation of the border States was neither expected or desirable. For 
a time, it would be better for the Southern Confederacy for those States to 
treacherously remain in the Union as a protection to them against the North. 
But this was to be done under the full conviction that they would thus force 
upon the border States the unavoidable alternative of “emancipating their 
slaves, or joining the Southern Confederacy.” 

This sort of dictation towards such States as Maryland, Virginia, North 
Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, is a modest specimen ef the 
arrogant self-importance of a paltry State with only some three hundred thou- 
sand effeminate whites, and four-sevenths of whose whole population are 
black. She and her colleagues are to form a Southern Confederacy, adopt a 
Constitution imperatively re-openiug the African Slave Trade, or enforcing 
their cherished theory of free trade, direct taxation, and no tariff, with the full 
belief that they will coerce the border States to join them, notwithstanding 
such a Constitution, under the pressure of necessary emancipation as the only 


4 


alternative. A--paltry State whose con tributionsito the Government, in the 
payment of duties and postages, does not near compensate the expense of fur- 
nishing her with mails, and a few custom-house‘and judicial officers, to reach 
at a single bound such a height of arrogant, dictatorial insolence is beyond 
all example. i | 

Yet when thus recklessly pursuing her treasonable schemes for her own 
peculiar local benefit, regardless of the injury she may inflict on others, she 
modestly expects our sympathy and protection, whilst she is perpetrating her 
treason, and accomplishing our destruction. 

In despite her grossly insulting, dictatorial arrogance, we are expected sub- 
missiveiy to place ourselves under the self-assumed guidance of crack-brained 
fire eaters, who have signalized their statesmanship by rendering ours, accord- 
ing to the admission of one of themselves, “the most corrupt Government in 
the world;’’ who have further signalized their capacity by breaking down 
the most powerful political party we have ever had; who are holding out as 
among the chief allurements to disunion and benefits of their Southern Con- 
federacy the re-opening of the piratical Slave 'rade; a trafic that is de- 
nounced as infamous by the Declaration of Independence, and the concurring 
voice of all Christendom; a trafic so infamous that the nation, with almost 
perfect unanimity, by her laws, classed it among the most detestable crimes, 
and awarded it the punishment due to highway robbery and murder. We 
are expected blindly to confide to such men the making for us of a new con- 
federacy, and new Constitution. 

These fire-eating gentry must excuse us. Kentucky acknowledges to no 
admiration for them, nor to any admiration or special partiality towards South 
Carolina. She can have no particular sympathy for a State that requires a 
property qualification for her representatives. A State that submits herself 
to the government af an aristocracy of nabobs, one of whom proclaimed in 
the United States Senate the doctrine that “laboring men are everywhere the 
mud sills of society,” that ‘every man is a slave who lives by the wages of his 
labor.’ ‘Thanks to the patriotic ‘‘ Working Men of Louisville,” who recently 
poured forth such a heart-warm, indignant protest against disunion, this na- 
bob may now learn that neither they nor their numerous brethren of the 
great West will ever become the mud sills of his impotent fire-eater Confede- 
racy. ‘Thanks, ten thousand thanks are due to those working men for the 
outpouring of their unadulterated, strong patriotic feelings, which has given 
to sorrowing, almost desponding hearts, the only glad pulsation that they have 
-known during weary months of gloom. They have shown how Kentuckians 
will always feel and speak when they assert their manhood, and cast off .the 
fetters of party ties and political leaders. They have shown that there are 
~still real, live Kentuckians among us, worthy of our proud State, and the 
stock from which they are descended. With aching hearts, listening ears 
had long been waiting, almost in despair, for the true ring of the right Ken- 
tucky metal. It has come, at last, and thanks to the working men of Louis- 
ville that it has. 

It is true that some of the States, but not so many by nearly one-half as 
charged by South Carolina, have grossly violated their duty and the Consti- 
tution by abortive attempts of their Legislatures to nullify the Fugitive Slave 
Law. ‘That law may need amendment in some of its details to render it per- 
feetly just, and especially better to guard against its being abused for the pur- 
poses of kidnapping. But that affords no justification for those attempts at 
nullification, which ought to be swept from the statute books of all the States. 
This the border States have an interest in demanding, and in due time will 
demand, under the penaly of retaliatory legislation. A slight application of 
the lex talionis by Kentucky would soon compel Ohio to repeal her obnoxious 
statute. She is the only one of our three near neighbors that has resorted to 
such statutes. Indiana and Illinois have habitually performed their duty to- 
wards us in this particular. A large majority of our recaptured fugitives have 
been taken by their owners or by the citizens of those States, without the aid 
of any officers of the law. Many years ago, when the Fugitive Slave Law 


6 


was much less efficient than now, Kentucky sent Commissioners to the Ohio 
Legislature asking a statute to supply the deficiency, and the request was 
promptly granted. A similar application made now, would, no doubt, result 
in the repeal of the obnoxious statute. It is true it has never had any effect 
in preventing the rendition of any fugitive upon which the Federal oflicers 
could lay their hands. The statute is treated by every one as a mere nullity, 
and there has never been a, prosecution under it; still it is offensive to Ken- 


tucky, tends to create bad, feeling between the two states, and ought to be re- 
pealed. It was passed during a period of high excitement and resentful feel- 


ing, resulting from the repeal of the Missouri Compromise and the maltreat- 
ment of Northern men in the management of Kansas affairs. Ohio has had 
time to eool off, her resentment will be appeased by the admission of Kansas 
as a free State, and she is now in a mood to listen to our remonstrances, and 
see and do what is so essential to her own honor, to say nothing of justice to 
us. No doubt on the application of Maryland and Virginia, for the sake of 
good neighborship, Pennsylvania will now do the same. The repeal of the 
nullifying statutes of Pennsylvania and Ohio would remove most of the South- 
ern discontent against such legislation so far as it is based upon the actual 
loss of fugitives. After they have passed through those two States the chance 
of re-capture is so very slight that they are not worth pursuing. The reten- 
tion of such statutes by the other States would be of no substantial injury to 
the South, and only serve as degrading mementos of abortive efforts of impo- 
tent malice or revenge. This is the right method for settling disputes between 
the States, but if that fails, we still have adequate remedy in the retaliatory 
legislation recommended by Mr. Calhoun as the true mode of redress against 
offending States, without a resort to disunion, which should be discarded from 
every true American’s mind as a remedy for nothing. Such a remedy is so 
grievous and costly that sound minds have long settled in the belief that it 
can never yield adequate compensating benefits. That has always been the 
doctrine of Kentucky statesmen. The memorable answer of Mr. Clay to the 
question when he would consent to disunion, was the reiterated “never, NEVER, 
NEVER.”  Disunion on the slave line carries such obvious and inevitable de- 
structive results to Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, that no Utopian pro- 
jector of a Southern Confederacy has ever yet had the ingenuity to suggest 
even the plausible semblance of any compensating benefit to those three 
States. 


NO. Iii.—THE SOUTH CAROLINA DECLARATION OF 
INDEPENDENCE. 


Why all this loud modern clamor against the attempts of certain States to 
nullify the ‘Fugitive Slave law? Is an attempt at nullification such a novelty 
to South Carolina? Some of her Fire-eaters have recently declared, in her 
Convention, that they had always considered the law unconstitutional, and if 
so, it cannot be very blameworthy to attempt its nullification. But if other- 
wise, why has South Carolina never formally protested against those attempts? 
Why has her delegation never asked Congress to unite with her in such pro- 
test? And why has she never resorted to the remedy for such grievances, 
that retaliatory legislation advised by her great leader, Calhoun? With what 
decency can she claim such abortive attempts at nullification, as sufficient 
cause for disunion, when her own people, and those of all the other extreme 
Southern States, have for years been successfully nullifying our neutrality 
laws, and laws against the piratical slave trade, which she and they have 
practically re-opened? With what greater propriety can she, or those other 
States, complain of obstructions to the recovery of fugitives by mobs of free 
negroes and the dregs of Northern States, when she, and those her neighbors, 
allow mobs, under the countenance of the most respectable members of their 
society, to habitually insult and maltreat Northern men and deprive them of 
their constitutional rights? The instances are very numerous where Northern 
men of respectability, have, without cause, other than that of their Northern 
residence, been compelled to leave unfinished business and depart from those 


7 


States under the threat of lynch law. Some men who have been settled in 
those States with their families have been compelled so to leave for no cause 
but their Northern birth, or, perhaps in addition, because when interrogated 
‘they would not admit that slavery was a divine institution. How many have 
been actually murdered for no other cause is a dark secret which will never 
be fully disclosed. It is suspected that there has been nearly as many of 
such murders as there has been of owners obstructed in the recovery of fugi- 
tives. The instances of the latter are certainly not one in twenty, perhaps 
not one in fifty, when compared with the instances in which Northern men 
and women have been causelessly driven from the extreme Southern States, 
in contempt and despite of the express constitutional guarantee of their right 
to be there. Yet it is expected that we shall adopt the quarrel of men who 
thus perpetrate actual, effective nullification, and aid them in ruining this 
great nation and ourselves, because of attempted nullification by others. 

We had thought, we of the border States had thought, that we had some- 
thing beside our large interest in slavery that was worthy our care and even 
our affection. Among these are, our whole country, our whole nation, our 
several States, the great cause of civil liberty here and elsewhere, now and 
hereafter, the great cause of Republican confederated Government, the love 
of peace and odium for civil war, the love for our children and their posterity, 
the strong desire for national, state, and individual prosperity, all dependent, 
together with the safety and permanent success of the slave institution itself, 
upon the preservation of the Union. But even if the slave institution were 
not thus dependent, we have no reason to deem it so transcendently import- 
ant as to require us to overlook, or disregard entirely, for its sake, all those 
other great interests and natural feelings. Still less should it require us to 
discard all sense of justice, approving indiscriminately everything done in the 
cause of the slavery propaganda, and censuring everything done by the par- 
tisans of free-soilism. We have the right, as it is our duty, impartially to 
weigh the faults on both sides, and many of us certainly do believe that the 
present crisis is full as much the fault of the Fire-eater Disunionists as of the 
Republicans; and on the score of nullification, that the former are more cul- 
pable than the latter. 

The only other great cause of complaint made by South Carolina is the 
election of Lincoln. This cause for disunion has been so often discussed, and 
its insufficiency proved as a thing by itself, that it need not be dwelt upon. 
But it is alleged that the election of a man of his principles indicated such 
hostility against slavery as to prove a settled purpose to abolish it. He ac- 
knowledges to a strong prejudice against it, that he believes it to be morally, 
socially, and politically wrong, that it would be all the better for the country 
ifit had never existed; but as it has grown up under the sanction of law, that 
Congress ought not to interfere with it in the,States, even if it had the power, 
which he distinctly says it has not. He further says that the South 1s enti- 
tled to an efficient fugitive slave law, which it is the duty of the Government 
to enforce, and if all power over the subject of slavery were given to him, he 
does not know what he could do with such power for the permanent benefit of 
either the blacks or whites, and certainly should not exert it for the purposes 
of immediate emancipation. Now, however objectionable to the South some 
of these opinions may be, yet it is an undoubted fact that these very same 
opinions were held by every President we have ever had, unless Jackson, 
Tyler, Taylor, and Polk be exceptions. 

But then it is said, there is his “irrepressible conflict” doctrine, which is 
a novelty unknown to any of our Presidents. True it is a novelty, and what 
is much worse, as arrant nonsense as ever fell from the lips of man. _ It first 
came from a Virginian, now a member of Congress, of imputed disunion pro- 
clivities, and probably uttered in behalf of disunion. Mr. Lincoln adopted 
the significant phrase, together with the theory it implies, as an argument in 
favor.of free-soil, and Mr. Seward took it from him and became its putative 
father. But with Mr. Lincoln it is a mere absurd theory of which he pro- 
poses no further practical application than as a justification for slavery pro- 
hibition in the Territories. The Fire-eater Disunionists raised such a clamor 


8 


against the phrase as to make it a most potent bug-bear all through the South. 
Yet strange to say, no sooner did they cast off their discuise, and avow them- 
selves disunionists, than they adopted the whole theory in its fullest extent, 
and use it asamain argument in favor of disunion. They now say sure 
enough there is an irrepressible conflict between free and slave labor, and 
therefore the Union ought to be dissolved on the slave line. Thus they con- 
vert his absurd speculative theory into an indisputable fact, though it is 
clearly disproved by the nation’s long experience of more than a century, and 
make it the pretext for most tremendous practical action. Free and slave 
labor have been operating side by side for eighty long years, in adjoining 
States and in the same State, even closely intermixed in towns and on farms, 
with a prosperous success. 

But they further charge that Lincoln was ridiculous enough to say that 
a house divided against itself must fall—that the States must become all slave 
or all free—and as the Northern States wont become slaveholding, and as the 
house wont fall, slavery is in the process of ultimate extinction. Seward was 
silly enough to adopt also, this absurd, unstatesmanlike theory; but neither 
of them proposed to aid the theory, or the verifieation of their fanciful opin- 
ions by any action on the institution within the States, but spoke of itas © 
what was to occur in the remote future, centuries hence, from natural causes 
alone, such as the irrepressible conflict. ‘The disunionists have also edopted 
this shallow theory of the divided house. They insist upon it as a certainty 
that the house must fall—that there is no use in waiting to see whether it is 
going to fall; and, therefore, they hasten out of it. 

They have fully adopted and put into practical use the “higher law’ doc- 
trine imputed to Seward in its worse sense. They have succeeded in fasten- 
ing great odium upon him by inculcating the belief that he meant there was 
a higher law which would justify him in disregarding the Constitution. 
They are now doing themselves the very thing, for the supposed desire to do 
which they heaped such unstinted abuse upon him. They too now ayow a 
higher law, which justifies them not merely in disregarding the constitution, 
but in breaking it down and trampling it under foot. The right of secession, 
on which‘ they are acting in their efforts to accomplish our destruction, is 
their higher law, and of a so much worse type than his, that whereas his only 
contemplated probable evasion, theirs is to be carried out by actual treason 
and civil war. 

By thus fully adopting the doctrines of the irrepressible conflict, the divided 
house and the higher law, the disunionists are vindicating Lincoln's preten- 
tions as a true prophet, and dignifying the je-june sciolist vagaries of him 
and Seward as the teachings of the true philosophy of government. 

There can be no truer utterance than that of a resolve of the Democratic 
legislature of ‘Tennessee, which says: ‘‘all the evils of the intense slavery 
agitation—all the discord, alienation, and bitter hatred between North and 
South—are the legitimate fruit, not of any necessary conflict between free 
and slave labor, but of a conflict between rival aspirants for official power and 
plunder.” That great vice of a Republic party feuds, together with the 
dextrous management of the Disunionists have brought about the present 
crisis. For party and disunion purposes the slavery question has been agita- 
ted until the whole nation has been sectionalized, by playing upon the oppo- 
site prejudices of North and South. The chagrin and hate caused by the 
defeat of the Democratic party, has been a great aid to the Disunionists in 
precipitating the rebellion with such surprising rapidity. If disunion should 
come, it will be properly ascribable to the scramble of parties “for official 
power and plunder,” rather than to the irrepressible conflict. Aversion to 
and apprehension of the Democratic party is one of the main reasons why 
conciliatory concessions cannot now be obtained from the North. If the 
Democratic party could be disbanded, there is no doubt that the Republican 
party would be prostrated before the next Congressional election. 

The South Carolina manifesto says that when Lincoln becomes President, 
“the slaveholding States will no longer have the power of self-government or 
self-protection.” Her apologists also say, more distinctly what she means, 


9 


that if not now, the South soon will be unable to protect its slave property 
against Northern aggression. This, if it were really felt, would be a dastard 
fear. But they who pretend to feel it are no cowards, and are hypocritically 
simulating an apprehension not felt. . There are no words to express the scorn 
due to the affectation of such fear as a paltry pretext for disunion. Kentucky 
hes right in the path of any such aggression, and must be the first to bear the 
brunt, yet she feels no fear for her property. In the calm self-reliance of 
proper manhood she scorns all such danger. Her property is amply secured 
by the Constitution against all approaches of the law, and she cannot con- 
ceive of any body of men having the temerity to cross her border without 
law, to rob her of her property. She has the most undoubting confidence in 
her ability to protect herself against such lawless violence. Even supposing 
that most improbable event that the Federal Government should become 
active participants in such an aggression against the South, are not her eight 
millions of people competent to their self-protection within the Union against 
so inefficient a government? If not, how can they protect themselves against 
the North when it becomes a hostile, seperate nation; how protect herself 
against any other powerful nation? Within the Union we should always have 
a divided North to resist, whilst out of the Union the united strength of the 
whole North would be arrayed against us. No Kentuckian would abate a 
single dollar in the price of his slaves on account of any such danger. The 
fear ought to be still less, if possible, farther South than with us. There is 
really no such fear felt, it is all pretence, gotten up as a pretext for disunion. 
What a slender inducement do they afford us to join a Southern Confederacy, 
when thus avowing its incompetency to self-protection. 

Though the eight millions are superabundantly able to protect themselves 
within the Union, yet their ability to properly protect themselves out of it 
against the eighteen millions who will be made inveterate enemies hy the 
very act of separation, may well be doubted. By a very probable union with 
the British possessions, the North would at once become the owner of the 
largest commercial marine in the world, and upon that basis could soon create 
a naval marme equal to that of England. With a hardy, enterprising popula- 
tion of more than twenty millions, and with such a navy, or even the tenth of 
it, how could our eight millions cope with them; how, indeed, even without 
such a junction with the British colonies? With our ports blockaded, our 
whole commerce stopped, our agricultural products left to rot on our hands, 
the sinews of war dried up among us, we.could be coerced into an ignomini- 
ous submission without even an invasion of our long line of undefendable 
inland border. If we wanted the consolation to be derived from the glory of 
well stricken fields of battle, we should have to incur all the disadvantage of 
being ourselves the invaders. The South would exhibit the impetuous valor 
of the French, but it would be met by the stubborn courage of the English. 
The ultimate victory would be on the side of the greater numbers and the 
largest purse, aided by the only naval force. Though only little more than 
double our numbers, the North would have more than quadruple our military 
strength. Yet we are seriously asked to give up our present prosperous con- 
dition, our present position of perfect security in the very center of a power- 
ful nation, to join an imbecile confederacy that must forever remain in a con- 
dition of degrading, mortifying inferiority to its more powerful neighbor. 
And all for what? For the shallowest, flimsiest pretexts that ever were urged 
for severing a great prosperous nation into two hostile parts. 

Aye, but the Republicans threaten that if they ever get the power slavery 
shall be excluded from the Territories, and though the laws of climate and 
trade have inexorably proclaimed the exclusion without any aid from Repub- 
licans, still the threat is an insult to the South, and Southern honor cannot 
brook an insult—we must dissolve the Union for revenge. If this be insult 
or injury, it is one which the South patiently and prosperously endured for 
sixty-four years, and in the instance of the Missouri Compromise it was in- 
flicted by the procurement of nearly all the eminent men of the South. For 
this the Government of this great nation must be broken up, and the vast 


10 


commercial and political interests of the South thrown into irretrievable ruin. 
This may be Fire-eater chivalry, but with other people it will pass under a 
less polite designation’ Kentucky will never put herself under the gui- 
dance of men who advise the cutting of her own throat to revenge an insult 
actually given; still less will she follow the guidance of those who would ad- 
vise a man to blow out his own brains to avoid an insult or an injury which is 
only threatened. This insult and Southern honor doctrine, if it is accompa- 
nied with a particle of practical sense, must mean to dissolve the Union for 
the purpose of enabling the Sonth to declare war against the North; for oth- 
erwise the honor will be lost, and the insult unavenged, just as much as if the 
South remains in the Union. Let the proposition, then, be stated in plain 
terms—the South secedes that she may go to war with the North. 


NO. IV.—A MISSISSIPPI VALLEY CONFEDERACY. 


When a sensible people break up an old Government for the purpose of 
forming a new one, among the most important subjects for consideration will 
be the probable stability of the proposed new Government. To pull down an 
existing Government, even when bad, is an achievement of comparatively 
little merit; but to erect upon its ruins a stable, good Government, is the very 
highest achievement of human wisdom. lt is for such an achievement that 
our fathers have, heretofore, stood as the exemplars of the world, and received 
its admiration and applause. Let us then inquire into the probable stability | 
of a Confederacy of all the Southern States. As to that ricketty concern, a 
Cotton State Confederacy, its probable duration is not worth talking about. 
Its durability and prosperity would be just what ought to be expected from 
fire-eater wisdom. 

A Southern Confederacy would commence its career with a dower of hate 
among its citizens towards each other, which has seldom prevailed in a nation 
without bringing civil war. This might not, and probably would not be the 
result in this instance, because they could and would be avoided by the milder 
modern process of secession. The hate which the Union men would bear to 
those who had dragged them into the Confederacy, would be just what the 
Fire-eater now bears the Abolitionist. Hate begets hate, and Fire-eaters would 
reciprocate the feeling most cordially. There would be no great interest of 
reciprocated benefits, such as that now subsisting between the North and the 
South, to silence and overcome such feelings. The Eastern and Western 
Cotton States would be mere rivals and eompetitors in the same branch of 
business without any commercial intercommunication. The two cities of 
Charleston and New Orleans, who are the promised recipients of nearly all 
the anticipated benefits, would start as rivals, and make the effects of their ri- 
valry felt before the Confederacy was even clothed with its new harness. The 
small amount of trade that would ever reach Charleston from Kentucky, 
Tennessee, and Missouri, would be a constant bone of contention between 
them. Louisiana would soon agitate, and successfully agitate for a South- 
Western Confederacy. The thing certainly would not last through the first 
vigorously contested Presidential election between an Eastern and a Western 
candidate. There would be nothing to keep it together, no love of country, 
no mutual pride in a powerful, prosperous country, no bright memories to 
stimulate a national feeling, but in lieu thereof the enduring hate of those 
Union-loving men who had suffered under the violation of all the patriotic 
feelings they ever knew, or wish to know, and the rending assunder the 
strongest ligaments of the human heart. Even the fact of slaveholding, 
though so violent an incentive to jealous sectional passion, and the main cause 
of the Confederacy, would do little to keep it together, because it would cease 
to be even a peculiarity where all would be slaveholders. Its disadvantage- 
ous comparison with its more prosperous neighbor, its proven incapacity to 
take rank among the more respectable nations, together with the disappoint- 
ment of all those golden dreams with which we were seduced into disunion, 
would make its citizens contemplate the Confederacy with contempt and 


11 


loathing. The smallest amount of sectional jealousy, of conflicting sectional 
interest would at once rend it into two parts. How many other sub-divisions 
it would ultimately fall into it is needless to speculate. 

Gloomy as the prospect is, we must make up our minds to the stern fact, 
that in less than ninety days eight Cotton States will have agreed to unite in 
another Confederacy, and the chances are that during the present year, Vir- 
ginia and North Carolina may join them. The question then will be up for 
consideration by our three border States, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, 
what shall they do? The question is already agitating all their citizens in 
every neighborhood. Neighbor and neighbor, friend and friend, brother and 
brother, and even father and son, are already quarreling over it. They are 
doing this upon a false issue. They are quarreling as if the only alternative 
for these three States was to remain in the Union, or join the South. This 
is a great error. Such is not our only alternative. We have a choice vastly 
better for us than either of those in such a contingency. It is to aid in form- 
ing a Mississippi Valley Confederacy. 

Asa relief to the manual labor of composition to an old man, he will re- 
produce here what he wrote on this subject two years ago, and published in a 
series of letters addressed to Hon. J. J. Crittenden: 


In answer to a claim made on you, Mr. Crittenden, as a Southern man, to aid the 
South in perpetrating the Lecompton iniquity, you properly said you could not be 
influenced by such consideration; but, even if you could, that the South had no 
such claim on you; that Kentuckians were neither Northern or Southern, but were 
Western people. You reminded them that there was such a section of our country 
as the great valley of the Mississippi, that Kentucky was in the center of that val- 
ley, and that, if she belonged to any section, the whole of that valley was her sec- 
tion. In so acting and in so urging, you have earned the thanks of every Kentuck- 
ian. It was time that the politicians should be informedvof these facts; and that, 
in their treasonable machination for splitting up our country into separate confed- 
eracies, they must bear in mind that our great valley, our section, is one and indi- 
visible. 

An eminent Democratic Senator from South Carolina, in projecting, in debate, a 
Southern confederacy, seemed to have remembered our valley, and to have had 
some appreciation of its value. In setting forth the magnitude and importance of 
his proposed Southern confederacy, he very complacently appropriated the whole 
valley as amere appanage of the more Southern cotton-growing States. The ex- 
treme modesty and reasonableness of this appropriation will be apparent when we 
recollect that those States are only nine in number, with a white population of not 
more than three million,—whilst the great valley, with its appendages, Michigan 
and Texas, already contains fourteen States, with a large portion of two others, and 
a white population of more than eleven millions. Leaving out its four cotton 
States, the valley contains a white population of more than ten millions. Count- 
ing only the settled portion of its territory, excluding all but a third of Texas, and 
going no further west than Kansas, the valley contains double as much territory as 
all the States east of it. When its population is only half as dense as that of Ken- 
tucky, or one-tenth that of Massachusetts, it will contain a population of one hun- 
dred million. If the rate of increase indicated by the last two decades of the cen- 
sus is kept up, it will, in the short space of ten years, have fifteen millions of whites. 
If not so now, it is the predetermined seat of American empire. In less than ten 
years its absolute sway as mistress of American power will be uncontrollable and 
indestructible. 

The diversity of climate in the valley, and of agricultural, commercial, and in~ 
dustrial pursuits among its people, serves to produce a homogenity of commercial 
interest; whilst its geographical position compels it into unity as the common home 
of one, and only one, people. A most prosperous home it has been. It has in- 
creased in population and wealth with a rapidity never paralleled in the history of 
the world. Unmixed prosperity reigns throughout its wide bound. Its march is 
onward, rapidly onward, to still greater strength, wealth, and prosperity. It knows 
no stagnation any where. It is rearing a hardy, industrious, vigorous race of free- 
men, such as the world never saw. It honors, encourages, and rewards all honest 
labor, whilst it scorns the sluggard. 

Thigis the mighty home of ours which this modest Carolinian would appropriate 
as a mere appendage to his nine cotton States, with their three millions of whites, 
in the formation ef his proposed Southern confederacy. States, one-third of whom 
are laboring under a lethargic paralysis, like that of their worn-out, poor land; 
who dishonor and decry manual labor among whites, and sent senators to Congress 


12 


to denounce all white men as slaves “who live by the wages of theit labor ;” States 
that have not sufficient mechanical] skill and industry to manufacture their own 
plows and axes, nor their hats and shoes; States who know no mantal industry but 
that of the slave, and the bulk of whose population that have not made their es- 
cape to richer lands are sluggishly attenuating a languid, sluggard existence under 
the enervating influence of their climate. The least arrogant shape in which the 
Senator’s idea can be presented is, that our ten States, with their ten millions of 
whites, will permit their future destiny to be controlled and dictated to them by 
those nine States and their three millions of white. The impudence of the assump- 
tion is on a par with the iniquity of the scheme. 

Land-locked though we are, our prosperity, like that of every other portion of 
the Union, depends upon our access to foreign markets. Let us shape this proposed 
Southern confederacy, and then see what it promises us by way of outlet and pro- 
tection to our commerce on the ocean. To avoid a mere geographical line of sepa- 
ration, and for other obvious reasons, Maryland and Delaware would be compelled 
to go with the North. The Carolina Senator does not seem to expect, with any con- 
fidence, that the free States of our valley will join his Southern confederacy. We 
know certainly that they would not. To say nothing of their prejudices, their 
commercial interests preponderate decidedly the other way. The Potomac and the 
Chesapeake would be the northeastern, whilst the Ohio, lowa, and Kansas would 
be the northwestern boundary of the Southern confederacy. The whole Atlantic 
and Gulf coast, from the Chesapeake to Mexico, has Norfolk for its only commer- 
cial harbor that can float a frigate. The States bordering that long line of coast 
have comparatively very little shipping, and no means of creating either a com- 
mercial or naval marine. The most paltry naval power, Spain, Portugal, or even ° 
Denmark, could blockade all our ports, and prevent our access to the ocean. The 
little ocean commerce of our own that we should have would be the prey of pirates. 
We should have to buy a transit for our commerce from the Northern confederacy, 
or, as has been recently suggested by a South Carolina paper, ignominiously place 
ourselves under the protection of some foreign power, and hire its aid to relieve us 
from the blockade. What a nation this would be! What a proud, prosperous con- 
federacy the scheme promises us! 

The scheme is that Kentucky and Missouri shall give up their enviable central 
position in the very heart of a great, prosperous nation, and become the mere fron- 
tier appendages of an impotent confederacy, and prevent, if we can, the Northern 
herdes from invading its Southern climes. Suppose the separation to have taken 
place, and the inevitable war with the Northern confederacy to have ensued, what 
aid would Kentucky and Missouri receive from South Carolina, Georgia, and Ala- 
bama in protecting our long line of indefensible frontier? An old Kentuckian an- 
swered the question by saying, they would offer us any number of gentlemen with 
epaulets, but not a single man with knapsack and musket. 

Why are Kentucky and Missouri to adopt such a position as that, in lieu of their 
present one of absolute security against foreign invasion, with free access to the 
ocean at the North and the South, and a powerful nation to protect their access to 
foreign markets? What is the compensating benefit? There is none, in fact, nor 
do the disunionists even pretend that there is. All that we are to achieve is to get 
rid of assoctating, under the same government, with the Northern people, who do 
not admire negro slavery, and have the ill manners or the impudence to tell us so. 
This is the whole grievance from which we are suffering, and which would be rem- 
edied by a separation. Wrong to us, or aggression upon our rights as slaveholders 
by the Federal Government, there has been none, absolutely none. 

Aye, there are those among us, the tools of party, who have had the impudence 
to upbraid us with imputed want of proper sectional sympathy, that we will not 
blindfolded aid these bad men in hastening our perdition. Let it be known by 
these revilers, and all others, from this time forth, that the people of Kentucky, 
Tennesse, and Missouri owe no fealty to any section which is not in strict subor- 
dination to the higher, nobler, worthier fealty which they owe to their country, 
their whole country—that is, tothe Union. But if there is any section, above all 
others, to which they are bound in close sympathy by the ties of affection and per= 
manent interest, it is their own section—that of which they are the heart and cen- 
ter, the great Valley of the Mississippi. When that section calls for disunion, Ken- 
tucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, will respectfully give ear to the reasons for such a 
national calamity,—for calamity it certainly will be, come when and how it may. 
Till then, till that sad day comes, Kentuckians, Tennesseans, and Missourians will 
listen to no counsels, make no combinations touching the Union, except from and 
with their brethren of the valley,—and that, too, only for its preservation and its 
security. 

What complaint have we of this valley to make of our country or our position ? 
When did such rapid growth in wealth and numbers,—such peace, plenty, happi- 
ness, and a Ssh individual and collective, ever attend the career of any other 
people? All history affords no parallel. Of all the regular pursuits of industry 


13 


among us, Which have most certainly and most rapidly yielded large fortunes, cot- 
ton-growing stands pre-eminent. Yet, strange to say, it is among the cotton-grow- 
ers of three of the States of our valley that alone is to be found, anywhere through- 
out the valley, the least taint of disloyalty tothe Union. They amongst us who 
have been most benefited by the Union, they who have most prospered under it, 
they who are most dependent upon its great, undivided strength for the safe, con- 
tinuous export of their great staple, they are its only revilers. Nineteen-twen- 
tieths, ave, ninety-nine hundredths of their Northern brethren of this great val- 
ley cry shame upon them, not merely for disloyalty to our section, but for the far 
worse disloyalty to our common mother, to our great, prosperous, glorious, all-lov- 
able country. . 

Can it be that any portion of these men are blinded with the foolish belief that 
the Delta of the Mississippi, that great key to the commerce of our valley, belongs 
to the people of Mississippi and Louisiana, and that they can so use it as to coerce 
our submission to their suicida: projects? Surely they cannot be sane, if any there 
be who so think. They are the occupants, not the proprietors. The proprietorship 
is with the whole eleven millions of whites who occupy the great valley. To assert 
a separate, exclusive proprietorship in themselves would be as wise as to attempt 
to stop the flow of the great Father of Rivers. Any puny effort, with such an ob- 
ject, would not be more futile than an attempt by them to resist that Northern hu- 
man torrent wich will certainly pour upon them whenever it becomes necessary to 
prove the true ownership and masterdom of the Delta. 

All sectional conventions are more or less impolitic, whatever may be their ob- 
ject. They tend to engender sectionalism, the great bane of our country. The 
people of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri have seduously abstained from thera 
with the most laudable pertinacity. But when so many secret and indirect, overt 
and direct efforts are constantly being made to foment jeslousies, ill-will, and dis- 
affection among the people of our valley—in fact, to separate us upon the slave- 
line, which runs straight through the center of the valley—shall nothing be done 
to counteract these machinations, nothing to evoke an expression of popular sen- 
timent in their condemnation? Whilst such efforts are making to pull us to pieces, 
whilst to that end unscrupulous use is made of that vile but powerful lever, party 
feeling, and of that still viler and more powerful agent, sectional feeling, shall 
nothing be done to revive and keep alive and pure that old-fashioned national feel- 
ing and patriotism that have made us what we are? Whilst insidious enemies are 
doing all they can to pull us asunder, shall we do nothing towards hugging closer 
and more firmly together? This thing has been too long neglected ; it has been too 
long left to political parties to play upon our passions and prejudices for their selfish 
party ends. The occasion is worthy of a great stir and political revival among the 
whole people of the valley. Either through legislative resolves, or the action of 
primary assemblies, something should be done to manifest the fixed, almost unani- 
mous resolve of the people of this great valley to continue together and remain for- 
ever one and indivisible. Let that mighty word be once spoken; let all the people 
of the valley, with comparative unaminity, confirm the fiat of nature, and pro- 
nounce our velley one and indivisible, and you strengthen, if you do not virtually 
re-establish, the foundation of our Government. Whilst the valley hangs together, 
our commerce will forever bind to us, in willing bonds, all the people between the 
Hudson and the Potomac; and our commerce, as one power, will equally bind to 
us, in willing or unwilling bonds, the States of the lower Mississippi. The narrow 
etrip lying south of the Potomac and east of the valley, would be too insignficant, 
as to population and national resources, ever to desire to become a separate confed- 
eracy, even if a rational motive could be conjectured for desiring separation upon 
such a geographical basis as that. If our valley remains firmly united, no human 
ingenuity can devise a line of probable separation. It may even be affirmed that, 
so long as our valley continues united, the Union will be indestructible. 


It is time that the suggestions of this letter should be seriously considered 
hy the people of Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri, and that they were doing 
whatever may be necessary to prevent our great Valley from being divided. 
An eminent French traveler of great ability, and of unrivaled reputation as 
judicious commentator upon our political institutions, has said that our Valley 
is “the most magnificent home that God has anywhere provided for man.” 
The enlightened Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, in the speech before 
alluded to, said: “The great valley of the Mississppi, now the real and soon 
to be the acknowledged seat of the empire of the world.” ‘There is the 
vreat Mississippi, a bond of union made by nature herself. She will main- 
iain it forever.” Let us follow the guidance of nature in framing a new 
Confederacy, and trusé to her persuasive, flattering promise that she will main- 


14 


‘tainils Union forever. If we can preserve our magnificent home in its entirety 
at the present juncture, we may well hope that the strengthening influence of 
natural causes will preserve it unbroken forever. 

- To this end the Legislatures of our three border States should immediately 
recommend such a Confederacy, in case the eight Cotton States shall actually 
resolve on secession, as a better alternative for them than either remaining 
in the Union or joining a Confederacy of the Slave States. In that contin- 
gency, and with a view to a Valley Confederacy, recommend all the States of 
the Valley to meet in Convention and adopt a Constitution for the new Union. 
If started at once, this can be accomplished by the time that the other border 
Slave States will be ready for final action. 

As to the success of such a plan there can be no reasonable doubt. The 
States north of the Ohio have the same repugnance to disunion on the slave 
line that we have. In the necessary avoidance of such a disaster, they will 
cheerfully give all reasonable guarrantees in the new Constitution on the sla- 
very question. They will be apt to concede everything Kentucky, Tennessee, 
and Missouri will ask as reasonable and necessaay to the harmony of the 
new Confederacy. ‘The Convention would be composed of an equal number 
of slave and free States, fourteen in all; or if Michigan and Texas be left out 
as not properly belonging to the Valley, then there would be twelve States. 
Or what would be better, take Kansas into the Convention, though not yet a 
State, thereby giving the free States the preponderance in number which 
they must ultimately possess, and thereby affording better earnest that the 
guarantees will be faithfully adhered to. 

This plan obviates two main difficulties in obtaining Northern concession 
towards conciliation. The political power of the North, both in Congress and 
the Legislatures, is in the hands of the Republican party. That party was 
ereated for the purpose of overthrowing the Democratic party, and party 
leaders will never concede, voluntarily, what tends to the defeat of their own 
party, and the re-elevation of their hated and defeated adversaries. The other 
and the main difficulty is, that concession made now would look as if the 
North was succumbing to Southern bravado and threats. This sort of sub- 
mission it has definitely made up its mind against, whatever may be the pen- 
alty. It is, therefore, useless to look to Congressional compromises for get- 
ting us out of our danger. Without the most ample cooling time, which the 
Cotton States have not the slightest intention of yielding, the present temper of 
feeling at the North will cause the rejection of any compromise. In forming 
a Valley Union on the basis of a proper Compromise, neither of these diffi- 
culties would occur. Its formation would not necessarily invoke the resusci- 
tation of the Democratic party in the new Union, and the needful concessions 
would not be made under the threats, but yielded to the friendly solicitation of 
the slave States of the Valley. 

It is true that much the larger amount of the trade of the North-West tends 
to the East, and not to the South, and if weighed in merely commercial scales 
the question of connection, as between the two, would preponderate in favor 
of the Hast. But that is not so. The question of peace or warfare in the 
Valley, are involved in the decision. It has heretofore been the almost undi- 
vided opinion of our statesmen and considerate men of every grade whose 
Opinions are at all worth quoting, that disunion on the slave line carries with 
it, as a necessary incident, immediate, protracted warfare, all through the 
Valley. Onthe contrary, division of the North-West from the Hast involves 
no such horrible evil as a necessary eonsequence. The commercial instincts 
and good sense can well be relied on to preserve the most amicable relations 
with the Valley. The sagacity of our neighbors across the Ohio will show them 
that the commercial interests of the East can be safelyrelied on for much more 
than that. The Valley Confederacy once formed, there would be a competition 
of alacrity of all between the Hudson and the Potomoc in seeking admission 
into our new Union. Western Virginia would be certain to join us, and the 
fear of severance on the Blue Ridge would compel all Virginia to do so. 

Should Louisiana and Mississippi obstinately refuse to take part in the pro- 
posed Convention, though much to be regretted, yet their refusal would be no 


3 0112 098215830 
ib 


serious obstruction to a new Union embracing the entire Valley. The Con: 
federacy once formed under the authority of “the ten or eleven millions of 
whites inhabiting the upper part of the Valley, the six hundred thousand 
whites of Louisiana and Mississippi would never be insane enough to offer 
resistance, but if they did, it would be quite easy to make them know to 
whom the ‘Valley and its great river belong. In the choice between the atti- 
tudes of associated States and subjugated Provinces they would never hesitate. 

After the North and East have joined us, the Atlantic Cotton States would 
not long delay to do the same. Then the necessary compromise amendments 
of the Constitution can be obtained, without either section seemingly yield- 
ing to the other, without even supposed loss of honor or pride to either. 
Thus and thus only can the good ship receive a needful, durable repair, and 
without the loss of a single plank again move forward majestically on her 
hopeful voyage to a gloriously immortal destiny. But should this brilliant 
result not be entirely attained, still our three border slave states will accom- 
plish a new Confederacy, without bloodshed, far better for all their vital per- 
manent interests than any other that can "be carved out of the dissevered 
Union. 

This is the last hope for Kentucky to avoid that utter ruin which her states- 
men have uniformly prognosticated as the inevitable result of disunion upon 
the slave line; a ruin,that would equally fall upon Missouri, and in a great 
though lesser degree, upon Tennessee also. 





